


The Origins of Bit Grubby

by Talkir



Category: Dungeon World (Roleplaying Game), Original Work
Genre: Halflings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-30
Updated: 2019-09-30
Packaged: 2020-11-08 10:36:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,717
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20834057
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Talkir/pseuds/Talkir
Summary: Bit Grubby was my Dungeon World halfing wizard. Here's his origin story!





	The Origins of Bit Grubby

On the island of Grove, a fair ways from the coast, lies the village of Dindolin. Nowadays, Dindolin is a growing town of industry, with businesses and production centres springing up throughout the streets, capitalising on the village’s placement along one of the cross-island trading routes. Usually, the roads of Grove were considered a second or third choice for transporting goods; Wyvern’s wings were faster for those who could afford to hire a beast and it’s rider, and boats were faster than wagon for those who could not. But in the same way as smaller ports would grow through the merit of being a convenient safe haven between two larger ports, the village of Dindolin has in recent years benefited from being placed on the meeting point of two main overland routes leading to a large town on the coast. What used to be farmland in Dindolin has been bought up by rich merchants and converted into warehouses and large buildings meant for processing fruit and fish before the completed goods are transported for sale elsewhere.

Before Dindolin began its transformation from farming village to boom town, the halflings living there were a moderately sheltered community of yokels who would, by and large, keep themselves to themselves and ignore the travelers passing through the village. Though there was one wee mite, who, much to his family’s chagrin, would follow and pester every traveller he could with a list of questions longer than a tall folk’s arm. Every halfling he didn’t recognise would get receive an interrogation about where they had come from, and where they were going, and why. Every non-halfling would receive hundreds of such questions. And most of all, Bit Grubby was the interested in wizards passing through the village, as rare as it was that a true mage would find themselves in Dindolin. Even the frauds, whose most impressive feats of magics involved making a copper coin disappear from a hand and reappear behind Bit’s ear would earn laughter and interrogation from young master Grubby. The rest of the Grubbys; his father, mother, dad, mama, Greatpa, his twin aunts and Bit’s nearly two dozen strong collection of siblings and half siblings and stepsiblings, had never met a wizard before, let alone spoken to one or heard one of their stories like Bit had. Early on, he did what he could to share his passions with his large family, but if any of the numerous parental figures in his life heard him trying to explain to a sibling what a ‘cantrip’ was, they would swoop in and put a stop to proceedings. Wizards and their dealings were something for other people, and certainly not a thing a good young halfling lad should be aspiring to. This didn’t discourage BIt from his interest, but it did discourage him from sharing it with his family. At least… Until he had something to really impress them with.

One summer’s day, Bit came across a disheveled looking half-elf in tattered and dirty robes hiding amongst the banana plants in one of the Grubby’s fields. She had some blood on her lower lip, and she begged Bit to help her hide from evil men who had attacked her wagon a little way up the road. She had hidden here, but seemed to be in a panic at the prospect of spending the night with no shelter.  
“Do you need shelter?” Bit asked, “It’s warm enough, and the moon’s almost bright enough to read by at this time of year.”  
“No,” the half-elf said, she absolutely was much too scared of the evil men finding her to spend the night outside. “Isn’t there a barn you can stash me in?”  
Sensing adventure, Bit showed the woman to the shed that mama would use in the harvest season to crate up freshly picked bananas. As the half-elf made herself comfortable, despite what Bit said about keeping her dusty boots off the banana crates, the halfling weighed up whether his family would accept a tall traveller like this one in the hillock for supper time. As he began to round on the answer “probably not”, the stranger seemed to read his mind.  
“You aren’t going to tell anyone I’m here, are you?” Her eyes widened and she took her feet off the crate. “Please, not even your friends or family. Or, sorry, whatever you halflings do instead of families,” she added, with a waggle of her hand and the vaguest hint of a scowl.

Bit wondered privately what she meant by that, and wondered aloud why she was so keen not to let anyone know she was here, and after some fumbled umm-ing and ahh-ing, she gushed out an explanation that if any of Bit’s family thought to try and help her by telling the regional watch that bad men were after her, then some of the watch might prefer to turn her over to her pursuers, for gold, as evil men are wont to do, rather than to help her. This seemed reasonable enough to Bit, and to the woman’s visible relief, he promised that he would add her to his consider list of secret stories that he keeps from his family.

So this was their arrangement for about a fortnight. Bit kept Derry, as he learned her name was, secretly hidden in the banana field at the bottom of one of the family’s fields. After a few days, investigators from the regional watch came by the hillock to talk to Greatpa and Bit’s aunts in private. Over supper, the three of them told the family at large that a wagon had been attacked by bandits a little ways up the road, and while the travellers had fought off their attackers, these bandits may have fled into the surrounding farms and villages to hide, and locals should keep their eyes and ears open for dangerous and desperate ne’er-do-wells. Bit was amused. His elders had obviously misunderstood - it was the travellers who had been driven off to hide in the farms, not the other way around. HE should know - he had helped to hide one of them in their banana shed!

One evening, after Bit had brought her a modest meal of scraps stolen from the supper table, Derry boasted one that she intended to travel to Grove’s capital in the coming days.  
“Now that the heat’s died down,” Derry said, mouth still full, “It’s about time I was off to make my fortune!” She waved a leg of chicken in a wide arc. The weather had been cooler these past few days, thought Bit. “Afterall, I’m probably the greatest wizard on this island.” As Bit’s eyes went wide and a grin grew across his face, Derry’s expression shifted from the boastful smarm of a cat that has spent two weeks getting the cream to that of a castaway watching her hastily constructed raft falling to pieces under her feet. The halfling began to gush about everything he thought he knew about magic. Derry parried his questions with nimble half-truths for as long as she could, but the adolescent was as if he had cornered prey. Going for an all-or-nothing gambit to stop the lad uncovering her as the mediocre hedge-wizard-turned-failed-bandit she truly was, she offered to teach him a simple cantrip if he would stop with his questions. Perhaps an easy prestidigitation? No way, articulated Bit. He needed something spectacular he could impress his family with; something to leave them awestruck and absolutely in love with magic. Derry, unfortunately, knew no such spells. There was, perhaps, one basic spell that Bit could learn… Learning it before mastering the basic cantrips was a bit like learning to run with scissors before learning to walk, but… What harm had ever come from an untrained magic user getting in over their head? Derry chuckled. No harm at all! Certainly not if she was miles away from the hovel he cast it in when it all went wrong.

Bit’s buttocks later left a considerable crater in the dust outside his front door when his mother flung him from the threshold. It was dark outside, and he had just cast his very first spell. In hindsight, he perhaps should not have attempted his first practical spell over the dinner table, but Derry had taught him all of the theory. As his mother moved from the doorway in order to slam it closed, Bit caught a brief glimpse of the two halves of his family’s ancestral dinner table. Behind one of the halves, he could make out the picture-perfect shocked expressions of his aunts and eldest sister, just visible through the mashed potato that now covered their faces. As he rose into a sitting position, the door slammed. By the time Bit had climbed to his feet, the door opened just long enough for a knitted woolen blanket to be tossed out of the door after him. Once he had picked this up and dusted it down, two oranges followed it. 

As he contemplated what would be his supper, his immediate future played out in front of him - go and sit down in a recently vacated banana shed, eat the oranges, sleep under the blanket, come back to the hillock, apologise to each family member in turn, and promise to never entertain thoughts of magic again.  
Derry probably wasn’t even a day away yet. Bit could choose to catch up to her - he know where she was going - and find out what he did wrong with the spell.  
Carrying the blanket and his oranges, Bit walked to the road, which was completely empty at this hour. He looked from the fields, to the horizon at the end of the road, to the hillock. He weighed up his two options, and weighed up the consequences of each choice. He flicked the blanket across his shoulders, tying two corners at his neck. It wasn’t a hard choice.

Grubby Family Hedge

Greatpa - Yan  
Father - Tan  
Dad - Tethera  
Mother - Pethera  
Mama - Pimp  
Elder Aunt - Sethera (twins with...)  
Younger Aunt - Lethera  
Eldest Daughter - Hovera  
2nd Daughter - Covera  
3rd Daughter - Dik  
Eldest Son - Yana'dik  
2nd Son - Tethera'dik  
4th Daughter - Pethera'dik  
3rd Son - Bit  
5th Daughter - Bumfit  
4th Son - Yana'bumfit  
6th Daughter - Tana'bumfit  
5th Son - Tethera'bumfit  
7th Daughter - Bum'peddero  
Youngest Daughter - Pethera'bumfit  
Youngest Son - Figgot


End file.
